Conventionally, personal measuring devices (e.g. electrocardiographs, sphygmomanometers, blood glucose meters, and urine analysis devices) are known with which a patient can measure various personal data outside of medical institutions.
For example, diabetics, who must regulate their blood glucose level daily, use such a personal measuring device (blood glucose meter) to measure their blood glucose level four times a day (before or after breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and before going to sleep), and record the results of those measurements in a medical records book, for example. Then, upon visiting a hospital once a month or after longer intervals, patients present their physician with measurements recorded up to that date and are advised regarding management of their blood glucose level.
However, there have been problems with patients living in remote areas having difficulties visiting the hospital, and with an approach where patients are responsible for recording the measured data, there is the problem of patients forgetting to record measured data. Accordingly, systems are known in which personal measuring devices are capable of connecting to the server of medical institutions or the like via public communications networks, such as telephone networks, and each time a patient performs a measurement, the measured data are transmitted to the server from the personal measuring device, so that accurate measured data can be gathered at the medical institution and patients can be diagnosed and receive lifestyle guidance from their physicians while at home.
With the above conventional system, however, because the times at which patients take measurements and transmit measured data are concentrated at certain times of the day, there was the problem of the server being difficult to access at those times. To solve this problem, solutions such as increasing equipment for connecting to the server from the outside are necessary, which for medical institutions leads to the problem of an increased equipment investment. An additional problem with this conventional system was that it required patients to spend time transmitting data after each measurement and bear the communications costs.
In order to solve the foregoing problems, it is an object of the present invention to supply a remote data management system with which measured data can be efficiently gathered, by keeping the transmission of measured data transmitted by measurers from being concentrated at certain periods of the day, and with which equipment investment can be minimized.